


Home Court Advantage

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: KNBxNBA, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 08:54:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: Taiga meets his gaze and smiles back, like a window light cutting through the fog of anticipation and held-back hope.





	Home Court Advantage

**Author's Note:**

> me: ah yes i will put this off until later--/jk its kagahimu did you really think i wouldn't do anything for today
> 
> apologies for any errors i didn't catch i'm 90% positive i left a placeholder metaphor somewhere in here orz
> 
> angst/injury cw also this is xmas-tangential so if that's not your thing

It would be warm for New York this time of year, but it’s not warm for LA. The thought doesn’t barge in so much as make its presence known, and Tatsuya reflexively pulls the cuffs of his hoodie down over his hands. The array of twisted, raised scars doesn’t start until a little up his wrist, but it feels like he’s pushing them away, like if he does it’ll help him focus on here and now. The water washes over his feet again and Taiga’s grip around his shoulder tightens. He’s still staring out at the grey water, looking like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how to say it.

Tatsuya waits, and tries not to wonder if it’s something he doesn’t want to hear.

“Hey,” Taiga says, letting out his breath with the word.

“Yeah?”

“I got an extra ticket for tomorrow. You don’t have to go, but...I’d be happy if you did.”

He squeezes Tatsuya’s shoulder again, and Tatsuya reflexively leans in closer. Both yes and no are fighting to rise to his lips, and it would be so easy to just say no, so easy to just say yes, but. He can’t pretend he hasn’t been thinking about this, flipping through the channels on TV to see an ad for those hideous Lakers Christmas jerseys or just watching Taiga on TV, how magnetic the ball is to his hands, and wanting to see it up close. He can’t pretend all of that doesn’t still gnaw at him, because he still has to make this all about himself when it’s only about him tangentially. It’s been four years; he’s done with rehab; he should be over this enough, and the longer he goes without doing it the worse it’s going to be when he has to. The longer he pushes this one decision off and avoids confronting this part of him, the smaller unit of a larger set of times he’s kicked the can down the road and around the bend, the harder it gets to say anything. It’s like snow melting and turning black from car exhaust, freezing again into impenetrable ice.

The water rushes over their ankles; Taiga half-flinches and almost stumbles, steadying himself on Tatsuya. It would be simpler if they could just extend this, being alone on the beach, keep the moment hanging in the sky like a planet, but it would be simpler if Tatsuya could go back, too. There’s no use in wishing for something like that; there’s only use in going on despite reality, with its teeth stuck to their clothes like burrs.

“Yeah,” Tatsuya says. “I’ll go.”

“Thank you,” says Taiga.

His arm slides down around Tatsuya’s waist; he’s smiling soft like the murmur of traffic behind them. Tatsuya shoves his flip flops further into the pocket of his hoodie and steps closer, wrapping his arms around Taiga. He’s not sure if it’s the right decision, but he really wants it to be.

* * *

They spend Christmas morning wrapped in blankets looking at the tree, decorated only a week before when they’d realized they hadn’t gotten one and needed some place to put the badly-wrapped bottle of cognac from Taiga’s dad. They’ve got all of Taiga’s old ornaments from Chicago, the touristy souvenirs he’d gotten from landmarks and sports venues, the cheap cardboard Benny the Bull that makes Tatsuya feel guilty every time he looks at it.

It’s the thing that not even Alex gets about his injury (and she gets most of it, maybe more than he does even), that Taiga had come here. He’d wanted to; Tatsuya would be a fool to believe he hadn’t. But he’d given up the opportunity waiting for him to be a one-team player, to deliver more rings to a city full of fans who adored him, to have them now write all-caps internet rants about what a fucking traitor he is. He’d given up a particular sort of legacy, the kind of thing Tatsuya would have given up in a heartbeat too if their positions were reversed—but he shouldn’t have made Taiga think he had to make that choice, all the same.

This year, though, Tatsuya had opened up one of the mostly-untouched boxes of crap he’d had shipped from New York, taken out the Statue of Liberty tree topper coated in gold glitter, and made himself believe for the moment that he was fine with it. He’s fine being back home, on these terms; he can look at the past without getting angry and frustrated all over again. (Funny how that’s easier to repeat it so he believes it when he’s not this close to blaming himself all over again, or when he’s not a few hours away from courtside seats to Lakers-Bulls.

Taiga has to leave when they’re still half-awake, and Tatsuya’s left with the dregs of the coffee and a twisting feeling inside of him, an urge to call it off. Fake sick, just say he can’t, hope the game gets canceled because the Bulls are too hungover from Christmas Eve, put it off. He’s a fucking coward. Not going would disappoint Taiga; it wouldn’t be of any benefit to him other than a momentary break, but he’s had so many of those. He’s had so much time already and he’s still so clearly not okay with it, and maybe that’s acceptable when you’re picking yourself up off the ground but is it when the time between then and now is almost as long as his entire NBA career?

At least he doesn’t have to drive there. Alex picks him up; she looks at him but doesn’t ask him if he’s okay or if he’s sure. The radio’s on some shitty holiday station, commercials reminding them that Christmas isn’t over quite yet and there’s still time to buy a present for someone special, mixed in with Alex swearing at the freeway traffic (still bad, even on a holiday).

She does ask before they get out of the car, adjusting her glasses in the rearview mirror.

“Are you really okay with this?”

“I told Taiga I’d come.”

Alex purses her lips; she knows him and she knows this well enough. And he knows her, what she’d said when they were drunk on her couch watching infomercials at three in the morning, that if it weren’t for him she probably wouldn’t have touched a basketball since retirement. If it weren’t for him watching her play, finding her afterward, pulling Taiga along on a gamble that looking back Tatsuya’s kind of amazed at (that they’d done it, that it had worked). But he’s not here to watch his past; he’s here to watch Taiga. He’s just got to keep reminding himself of that.

It’s not enough to prepare him for the atmosphere. Being a statistician for a D-one college team means being in arenas like this one, hearing the squeak of soles on wood, watching the aerodynamics of every shot. But that’s nothing like this, squads of men with decades of refining this craft under their belt, skills beyond what most of the kids Tatsuya works with can hope to sniff. Taiga, going hard in warmups, the snap of his layup, sharp passes when everything is casual and slow.

The tipoff, though, is a guillotine through his stomach, squashing the anxiety into twins of envy and pure want. Taiga takes a pass and tears up the floor, steps like jagged lightning, his dribble almost an afterthought and no reason not to jam the ball into the hoop, no reason not to jump straight in the air, little momentum, like a rocket headed toward orbit straight from under the net. God, Tatsuya wants that, to be there on the court, passing to him, taking the pass back, the ball meeting its mark so securely. He wants to be the one marking Taiga, meeting his moves and defending him, trying to outthink and outmaneuver him where he’s most at home. Taiga drives forward again; the crowd roars. They already know the shot’s going in before Taiga even decides that he’s going to try a three.

“On fuckin’ fire,” says someone behind Tatsuya, and Tatsuya’s inclined to agree.

The itch to throw off his sweater and get onto the court in his street clothes is more like chicken pox, all over Tatsuya’s body, impossible not to scratch at, by the end of the first quarter. It hurts but it’s also pushing him; he wants like he’s never wanted. Like he’s always wanted but he’s squashed down most of the last few years, told himself that want was irrelevant because he’d never get it anyway. It’s like seeing him on TV the first time had been, when his wrist was still all stapled up on the outside when he’d first known this was out of reach for him forever, the door slamming right on his wrist as he’d tried to pull it in behind him.

Tatsuya pushes the cuffs of his sweater up anyway, asks Taiga’s dad and Alex if they want anything, and heads for the concourse. He needs air. Maybe a drink, too, but he needs time to process this and to get it under control and to think this through. He tries to focus on the stats, Taiga looking like he’ll be most of the way to a triple double by half, all of those points and rebounds and a handful of blocks, and—it doesn’t seem weird at all that Taiga’s in the Lakers’ colors instead of the Bulls’ here. The person ahead of him in line has Taiga’s jersey, for the Lakers, the gold popping against the black t-shirt she’s wearing underneath. Tatsuya wants to play with him, against him; he wants to be in the position of both hoping Taiga gets the stats he truly doesn’t care about and trying to make sure he doesn’t.

The itch to play burns at his skin as he makes his way back down to the seats and Taiga rises into a meteor jam. His eyes lock on Tatsuya’s face and he smiles, and Tatsuya’s already smiling back.

* * *

Taiga drives them back, the radio on so low Tatsuya can barely hear that something’s there. The quiet isn’t heavy, but Taiga’s waiting to say something and Tatsuya’s not sure if there’s anything he should say first.

“Did you…how was it?”

How does he say this? Everything he’d prepared to say, all the details of the moments of Taiga’s game, praise for his performance beyond what he’d already said with Taiga’s dad and Alex (that fucking triple double, forty points), falls out of his brain like someone’s yanked away the floor. He can’t just say he wants to play; he can’t just say he liked it because that’s not enough.

“Thank you for taking me. I’m glad I came.”

The smile he gives Taiga isn’t the tight flash of his default version; it’s not a fake. Taiga always knows the difference, but Tatsuya needs him to know, to be extra-sure. Taiga meets his gaze and smiles back, like a window light cutting through the fog of anticipation and held-back hope.

"I'm really glad you came, too,” Taiga says. “When you're there. I just--I missed you. I miss playing with you; I miss having you there with me, I mean, for me, basketball. It's always been you, you know? Basketball without you just doesn't feel the same."

Tatsuya feels so fucking selfish all over again; he's sixteen and standing in front of Taiga on the basketball court and the selfishness is crashing down on him like a truck full of open boxes of lightbulbs. It's that but larger, projected onto a screen playing on a bigger stage.

"Don't," says Taiga, leaning over to check his blind spot as he makes the turn, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on Tatsuya's knee. "I didn't mean it like that. I mean, I missed you but you've hurt so much already and I didn't want you to hurt more and to have to look at it before you were ready to deal with it. If you still didn't want to tonight, I wouldn't have pushed you; I would have--well, I don't get it, get it, but."

He brakes for a stop sign and Tatsuya leans over to kiss him. He's rambled enough; he does get it, enough that it matters, probably more than Tatsuya deserves. And regardless, he's so glad he has Taiga, so fiercely he just wants to nudge the gearshift into park and kiss Taiga for longer, fuck whatever cars come up behind them.

"You enjoyed it, huh," says Taiga as they pull into the parking lot.

He's fishing; Tatsuya's not even mad, and he could, should tell Taiga how he'd felt with the dunk that got Taiga to thirty, the spark in his eyes so visible and contagious, his jumps pushing him through traffic in front of the net, blocking a shot or grabbing an impossible rebound, the pop of his passes back the other way. He's about to say as much.

"I want to fucking play," he says, instead.

Taiga pauses, about to pop the locks. "Then, let's."

He's just played; either way he'll destroy Tatsuya (four years, no matter how much he's rehabbed and how good shape he's gotten in, how many basketball statistics he looks at every day, how much residual muscle memory makes him want to sink into a familiar shooting stance; it's been four years since he'd last picked up a basketball). Either way they shouldn't, but that doesn't stop them from doing a lot. And right now, shouldn't isn't enough to keep Tatsuya's feelings at bay. They're spilling over his levees, in a rush like a hundred-year flood. There's no reason to spend the mental energy to make it stop.

It's still light out, the mercy of the Christmas lunchtime game; Taiga and Tatsuya bump each other's shoulders and it feels like, were Tatsuya to close his eyes and wish a little harder, he could take his hoodie off and there would be no scars on his forearm. They'd be 24 again, squeezing the last bits of September out before parting ways for another season. Tatsuya blinks hard, and lets the thought go. It's enough, now, of wanting that; that's not even the basketball he wants right now (okay, it is, a little, but the never-latent desire to prove himself over again, arm and all, is rising up higher than that, jumping to grab the rebound of his motivation).

Taiga checks him the ball first, and Tatsuya resists the urge to heft it in his hands and make a big deal out of how it feels, in part because it doesn't feel like a big deal at all. It's like he'd just gotten off that last shot, the one he always makes in his dreams instead of missing, the one where his form is right and his wrist doesn't crack and he doesn't get shoved over and no one is in the position of not getting away from him fast enough and stomps on his wrist instead. He dribbles, and it feels rough; the ball almost gets away from him and he almost loses control; Taiga looks like he's just letting him get a feel for it, but fuck that. There's no better way of getting a feel than meeting Taiga's aggressive defense, charging past it. Except Tatsuya can't get past; he tries to shoulder Taiga out of the way but he's off balance enough for Taiga to grab the ball.

Tatsuya gives chase; he still practices his vertical more than he'll admit but it's nothing compared to Taiga and trying to block his J would be futile even when Tatsuya was at his best. He still tries, damn it. It’s Taiga’s lead, though, and once again he checks the ball to Tatsuya. Tatsuya doesn’t give him a moment of wait; he just goes. The ball rolls off his fingers like it should until it nearly spins away from him again; he lunges and he knows where it’s going to be gathers it in his hands and pulls back; there’s enough room for him to shoot over Taiga, get into the same old motion, try to ignore his left wrist and almost come up short when it really doesn’t hurt (it shouldn’t; rehab and time took care of that, but if it doesn’t then why doesn’t work?) but he still has enough time to try a long two.

He airballs it, and Taiga gets to the loose ball first. His stance is open, easy; it’s the way Tatsuya had practiced as a kid in front of the mirror. Watching him go from courtside seats is something beautiful; watching his palm meet the ball like they’d evolved in parallel, twisting around each other in a helix, is something absolutely fucking spectacular. There’s no way Tatsuya’s going down without a fight here. He darts in, trying to throw Taiga off guard; he’s still smaller and a little bit quicker, enough to get Taiga just the right amount of flat-footed, throw off his motion. Tatsuya feels his feet land on the asphalt, hears the smack, sweeter than any rubber on hardwood, and grabs at the ball. Taiga grabs back but Tatsuya’s already dancing backwards, to the side, trying to drive past. Caution won’t do him much good here; he sprints, closer; a layup won’t work (Taiga’s too fast; he’ll get there and make the block) so he moves to the side (Taiga’s lateral motion is more than good enough for the NBA, but if Tatsuya’s going to pick on anything it’s that). He breathes; he barely thinks other than some vague ideas about a shooting motion, because he remembers and he still does it into the air when he’s feeling really shitty or drunk or when he misses it too much. The ball hits the backboard and goes in.

Taiga pulls Tatsuya in for a hug, leaving the ball to roll toward the fence, pushing a brief kiss up against his bangs.

“I’m not on your team, remember?” says Tatsuya.

“I don’t give a shit.”

Taiga scores seven times more and Tatsuya scores once, nothing close to even his lowered expectations of himself. But it almost doesn’t matter. He’s nowhere close to competitive and it feels rusty and slow and wrong, going back to check and pay attention to things he remembers not having to think about it. It still feels fucking fantastic the moments when it falls into place, only to start scraping against the rusty coating a second or two later, the drive that results in a jump that feels perfect and a shot that goes nowhere, a dribble that he’s barely paying attention to even if he can’t get past Taiga, the block that ends up falling right back to Taiga and letting him put it in.

His wrist is already aching when they’re done. He overdid it, and it’s probably obvious, but Taiga doesn’t say anything about it. They’re both pretty damn tired by the time they shower and fall into bed, and Tatsuya thinks he should probably have taken something for the pain but he’s a little too drowsy and comfortable right now.

He wakes up with his wrist screaming, ten minutes before the alarm’s due to ring, fumbling in the dark for the Tylenol he still keeps on the nightstand. Taiga shifts beside him at the sound; Tatsuya’s groping with the top. It’s been a while since he’s had to do this one-handed; Taiga’s murmuring something but Tatsuya’s gritting his teeth, focusing on the pain and on the top of the bottle.

“I got this,” he says, to whatever Taiga’s saying, shaking the bottle.

He swallows the pills dry, wincing as they go down, leaning back against the pillows and trying to focus as he waits for them to kick in. He feels Taiga shift again, sitting up and worming his hand around Tatsuya’s waist, stroking his hip; they wait. It’s not too long until the pain swallows itself back down halfway, and Tatsuya flexes his fingers.

“I had a great time yesterday,” Tatsuya says.

He scoots closer to Taiga, resting his head on Taiga’s shoulder and squeezing Taiga’s thigh with his good hand.

“Me, too,” says Taiga.

His words are warm, the space heater they don’t need even this early in the morning, balmy air filtering in through the window. They stick in Tatsuya’s chest, though, and he’s glad of it anyway.


End file.
